The Baptist Digest

Eat Your Rice And Beans

April 2005

We had a church pot luck last night. I brought rice and beans. To my surprise my beans suffered from neglect, my rice didn’t. I supposed people forgot to take their Beeno and preferred to pass on the beans. I have noticed that fasting, like my beans, suffers from neglect in the church. I wonder why.

Perhaps we have made fasting strictly a medical issue when it is a spiritual one. Perhaps well meaning friends and family encourage the neglect. Some neglect is due to fear of falling into legalism. “You need three square meals” daily propaganda is also guilty. And consumerism is no friend of fasting.

Yet, according to Don Whitney, the Bible mentions fasting 77 times to baptism’s 75. 22 books of the Bible give it honorable mention. To my recollection I have never heard a sermon on fasting in my thirty five years of walking with the Master! John Wesley said, “Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it” (Quoted in Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster, 41). I am afraid our camp is guilty of the latter.

Neglect of fasting is surprising because, as Whitney alerts, Jesus like Moses, David, Elijah, Esther, Daniel, Anna and Paul fasted. It is surprising because Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, Charles Finney, Billy Graham, John Bright and Georges Boujakly (Haha!) fasted.

Neglect of fasting in the church is surprising especially since in the history of the USA the nation has been called to fast by Adams, Madison and Lincoln The Didache, the earliest Christian catechism written to instruct the church of the first century, urged two weekly fasts on Wednesday and Friday. (See his Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life).

In the life of walking with the master the neglect of fasting is unjustifiable. The Master assumed we would fast. In Matthew 6 he assumed we would give, we would pray and we would fast. In every case he said, “When you.” All three practices of righteousness risk neglect or abuse.

Yet sermons on giving and praying abound. Perhaps we neglect teaching on fasting because it is not a personal practice for us. We may do it occasionally when we are in trouble. But we don’t only give and pray and encourage the same only when trouble is present. Dallas Willard encourages in The Spirit of the Disciplines that “When a person chooses fasting as a discipline, he or she must, then, practice it well enough and often to become experienced at it, because only the person who is well habituated to systematic fasting as a discipline can use it effectively as a part of direct service to God…” (168).

Giving, praying and fasting are three peas in a pod. They hang out together in the mind of the Master. What Jesus has joined together, let us not put asunder. Eat the rice but also don’t neglect the beans. Give, pray and fast to nourish your soul as you Walk with the Master.

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I thought you might like this column I read at baptistdigest.com. "Eat Your Rice And Beans" We had a church pot luck last night. I brought rice and beans. To my surprise my beans suffered from neglect, my rice didn’t. I supposed people forgot to take their Beeno and preferred to pass on the beans. I have noticed that fasting, like my beans, suffers from neglect in the church. I wonder why. Perhaps we have made fasting strictly a medical issue when it is a spiritual one. Perhaps well meaning friends and family encourage the neglect. Some neglect is due to fear of falling into legalism. “You need three square meals” daily propaganda is also guilty. And consumerism is no friend of fasting. You can read the rest here: http://www.baptistdigest.com/archive/column/eat_your_rice_and_beans/